Bryan Metzger,Oma Seddiq
Thu, May 5, 2022,
Trump stands with now-Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the White House after she was sworn in on October 26, 2020.
Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
Trump took some credit for the fact that SCOTUS appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
"Some people maybe say it's my fault and some people say, 'Thank you very much,'" he said.
Trump cemented the high court's 6-3 conservative majority by appointing three new justices.
Days after the unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion showing a majority of justices in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, former President Donald Trump took some credit for the potential loss of constitutionally protected abortion rights.
Trump echoed other Republicans in condemning the fact that the opinion was leaked at all during an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday. Until then, Trump had stayed uncharacteristically quietsince Politico published the draft opinion on Monday night.
"I will say the leak was a terrible thing," Trump said. "You're just not used to that for the Supreme Court. It was very shocking. I think it was a very bad thing for the court."
The former president also said that the opinion is "something that they're working on I would imagine, I don't think anyone made it up." The court confirmed the validity of the document on Tuesday and Chief Justice John Roberts announced an investigation into the leak.
Trump was then asked about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blaming Trump for the likely gutting of reproductive rights. In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Schumer laid the responsibility for the revocation of abortion rights at the feet of both the former president and Senate Republicans, who had stacked conservative judges on the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court.
"The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has now completely devolved into the party of Trump," said Schumer. "Every Republican senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for Trump justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people."
Trump took some credit for the fact that SCOTUS appears poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
"Some people maybe say it's my fault and some people say, 'Thank you very much,'" he said.
Trump cemented the high court's 6-3 conservative majority by appointing three new justices.
Days after the unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion showing a majority of justices in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade, former President Donald Trump took some credit for the potential loss of constitutionally protected abortion rights.
Trump echoed other Republicans in condemning the fact that the opinion was leaked at all during an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network on Wednesday. Until then, Trump had stayed uncharacteristically quietsince Politico published the draft opinion on Monday night.
"I will say the leak was a terrible thing," Trump said. "You're just not used to that for the Supreme Court. It was very shocking. I think it was a very bad thing for the court."
The former president also said that the opinion is "something that they're working on I would imagine, I don't think anyone made it up." The court confirmed the validity of the document on Tuesday and Chief Justice John Roberts announced an investigation into the leak.
Trump was then asked about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blaming Trump for the likely gutting of reproductive rights. In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Schumer laid the responsibility for the revocation of abortion rights at the feet of both the former president and Senate Republicans, who had stacked conservative judges on the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court.
"The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has now completely devolved into the party of Trump," said Schumer. "Every Republican senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for Trump justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people."
Trump was apparently unfazed by the comments.
"Well, a lot of people are very happy about that," Trump said of the court potentially overturning Roe. "So some people maybe say it's my fault and some people say, 'Thank you very much.'"
While anti-abortion rights activists would celebrate the reversal of Roe, a majority of Americans actually oppose overturning the 1973 landmark ruling that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion, according to public opinion polling.
Anti-abortion rights advocates have for decades pushed the high court to throw out Roe and have had some success in restricting access to abortion in red states across the country. Conservative legal groups, at the same time, have strategically promoted judges who've made their opposition to abortion known.
Trump, when running for president in 2016, pledged to put anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court and that if elected, Roe would "automatically" be overturned.
All three of Trump's Supreme Court appointees — Associate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — voted in the majority to overturn Roe v. Wade, Politico reported. The court is expected to take a final vote and issue a final opinion by late June on the major abortion-rights case, Dobbs v. Jackson's Women Health Organization. The case concerns a Mississippi law that seeks to ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, challenging the 24-week standard set in Roe, commonly referred to as viability.
Before Trump entered the political scene, he supported abortion rights. During an NBC News interview in 1991, Trump described himself as "very pro-choice."
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